Eleanor, Mrs. Humphry Ward [best books to read now .txt] 📗

tension and grief and doubt would be gone then for me, at a breath. But it never, never does. And I remind myself--painfully--that his argument holds whether the arguer believe or no. "Somehow or other you must get conduct out of the masses or society goes to pieces. But you can only do this through religion. What folly, then, for nations like Italy and France to quarrel with the only organisation which can ever get conduct out of the ignorant!--in the way they understand!"--It is all so true. I know it by heart--there is no answering it. But if instead he once said to me--"Eleanor, there is a God!--and it is He that has brought us together in this life and work,--He that will comfort you, and open new ways for me"--Ah then--then!--

* * * * *

'Christmas Day. We went last night to the midnight mass at Santa Maria Maggiore. Edward is always incalculable at these functions; sometimes bored to death, sometimes all enthusiasm and sympathy. Last night the crowd jarred him, and I wished we had not come. But as we walked home through the moonlit streets, full of people hurrying in and out of the churches, of the pifferari with their cloaks and pipes--black and white nuns--brown monks--lines of scarlet seminarists, and the like, he suddenly broke out with the prayer of the First Christmas Mass--I must give it in English, for I have forgotten the Latin:

'"_O God, who didst cause this most holy Night to be illumined by the rising of the true Light, we beseech Thee that we who know on earth the secret shining of His splendour may win in Heaven His eternal joys_."

'We were passing through Monte Cavallo, beside the Two Divine Horsemen who saved Rome of old. The light shone on the fountains--it seemed as if the two godlike figures were just about to leap, in fierce young strength, upon their horses.

'Edward stopped to look at them.

'"And we say that the world lives by Science! Fools! when has it lived by anything else than Dreams--at Athens, at Rome, or Jerusalem?"

'We stayed by the fountains talking. And as we moved away, I said: "How strange at my age to be enjoying Christmas for the first time!" And he looked at me as though I had given him pleasure, and said with his most delightful smile--"Who else should enjoy life if not you--kind, kind Eleanor?"

'When I got home, and to my room, I opened my windows wide. Our apartment is at the end of the Via Sistina, and has a marvellous view over Rome. It was a gorgeous moon--St. Peter's, the hills, every dome and tower radiantly clear. And at last it seemed to me that I was not a rebel and an outlaw--that beauty and I were reconciled.

'Such peace in the night! It opened and took me in. Oh! my little, little son!--I have had such strange visions of you all these last days. That horror of the whirling river--and the tiny body--tossed and torn. Oh! my God! my God!--has it not filled all my days and nights for eight years? And now I see him so no more. I see him always carried in the arms of dim majestic forms--wrapped close and warm. Sometimes the face that bends over him is that of some great Giotto angel--sometimes, so dim and faint! the pure Mother herself--sometimes the Hands that fold him in are marred. Is it the associations of Rome--the images with which this work with Edward fills my mind? Perhaps.

'But at least I am strangely comforted--some kind hand seems to be drawing the smart from the deep deep wound. Little golden-head! you lie soft and safe, but often you seem to me to turn your dear eyes--the baby-eyes that still know all--to look out over the bar of heaven--to search for me--to bid me be at peace, _at last_.

'February 20. How delicious is the first breath of the spring! The almond trees are pink in the Campagna. The snow on the Sabine peaks is going. The Piazza di Spagna is heaped with flowers--anemones and narcissus and roses. And for the first time in my life I too feel the "Sehnsucht"--the longing of the spring! At twenty-nine!'

'March 24, Easter week. I went to a wedding at the English church to-day. Some barrier seems to have fallen between me and life. The bride--a dear girl who has often been my little companion this winter--kissed me as she was going up to take off her dress. And I threw my arms round her with such a rush of joy. Other women have felt all these things ten years earlier perhaps than I. But they are not less heavenly when they come late--into a heart seared with grief.

'March 26. It is my birthday. From the window looking on the Piazza, I have just seen Edward bargaining with the flower woman. Those lilacs and pinks are for me--I know it! Already he has given me the little engraved emerald I wear at my watch-chain. A little genius with a torch is cut upon it. He said I was to take it as the genius of our friendship.

'I changed the orders for my dress to-day. I have discovered that black is positively disagreeable to him. So Mathilda will have to devise something else.

'April 5. He is away at Florence, and I am working at some difficult points for him--about some suppressed monasteries. I have asked Count B--, who knows all about such things, to help me, and am working very hard. He comes back in four days.

'April 9. He came back to-day. Such a gay and happy evening. When he saw what I had done, he took both my hands, and kissed them impetuously. "Eleanor, my queen of cousins!" And now we shall be at the villa directly. And there will be no interruption. There is one visitor coming. But Aunt Pattie will look after her. I think the book should be out in June. Of course there are some doubtful things. But it must, it will have a great effect.--How wonderfully well I have been lately! The doctor last week looked at me in astonishment. He thought that the Shadow and I were to be soon acquainted, when he saw me first!

'I hope that Edward will get as much inspiration from the hills as from Rome. Every little change makes me anxious. Why should we change? Dear beloved, golden Rome!--even to be going fourteen miles away from you somehow tears my heart.'

* * * * *

Yes, there they were, those entries,--mocking, ineffaceable, for ever.

As she had read them, driving through all the memories they suggested, like a keen and bitter wind that kills and blights the spring bloom, there had pressed upon her the last memory of all,--the memory of this forlorn, this intolerable day. Had Manisty ever yet forgotten her so completely--abandoned her so utterly? She had simply dropped out of his thoughts. She had become as much of a stranger to him again, as on her first arrival at Rome. Nay, more! For when two people are first brought into a true contact, there is the secret delightful sense on either side of possibilities, of the unexplored. But when the possibilities are all known, and all exhausted?

What had happened between him and Lucy Foster? Of course she understood that he had deliberately contrived their interview. But as Lucy and she came home together they had said almost nothing to each other. She had a vision of their two silent figures in the railway-carriage side by side,--her hand in Lucy's. And Lucy--so sad and white herself!--with the furrowed brow that betrayed the inner stress of thought.

Had the crisis arrived?--and had she refused him? Eleanor had not dared to ask.

Suddenly she rose from her chair. She clasped her hands above her head, and began to walk tempestuously up and down the bare floor of her room. In this creature so soft, so loving, so compact of feeling and of tears, there had gradually arisen an intensity of personal claim, a hardness, almost a ferocity of determination, which was stiffening and transforming the whole soul. She could waver still--as she had wavered in that despairing, anguished moment with Lucy in the Embassy garden. But the wavering would soon be over. A jealousy so overpowering that nothing could make itself heard against it was closing upon her like a demoniacal possession. Was it the last effort of self-preservation?--the last protest of the living thing against its own annihilation?

He was not to be hers--but this treachery, this wrong should be prevented.

She thought of Lucy in Manisty's arms--of that fresh young life against his breast--and the thought maddened her. She was conscious of a certain terror of herself--of this fury in the veins, so strange, so alien, so debasing. But it did not affect her will.

Was Lucy's own heart touched? Over that question Eleanor had been racking herself for days past. But if so it could be only a passing fancy. It made it only the more a duty to protect her from Manisty. Manisty--the soul of caprice and wilfulness--could never make a woman like Lucy happy. He would tire of her and neglect her. And what would be left for Lucy--Lucy the upright, simple, profound--but heartbreak?

Eleanor paused absently in front of the glass, and then looked at herself with a start of horror. That face--to fight with Lucy's!

On the dressing-table there were still lying the two terra-cotta heads from Nemi, the Artemis, and the Greek fragment with the clear brow and nobly parted hair, in which Manisty had seen and pointed out the likeness to Lucy. Eleanor recalled his words in the garden--his smiling, absorbed look as the girl approached.

Yes!--it was like her. There was the same sweetness in strength, the same adorable roundness and youth.

And that was the beauty that Eleanor had herself developed and made doubly visible--as a man may free a diamond from the clay.

A mad impulse swept through her--that touch of kinship with the criminal and the murderer that may reveal itself in the kindest and the noblest.

She took up the little mask, and, reaching to the window, she tore back the curtains and pushed open the sun-shutters outside.

The night burst in upon her, the starry night hanging above the immensity of the Campagna, and the sea. There was still a faint glow in the western heaven. On the plain were a few scattered lights, fires lit, perhaps, by wandering herdsmen against malaria. On the far edge of the land to the south-west, a revolving light flashed its message to the Mediterranean and the passing ships. Otherwise, not a sign of life. Below, a vast abyss of shadow swallowed up the olive-garden, the road, and the lower slopes of the hills.

Eleanor felt herself leaning out above the world, alone with her agony and the balmy peace which mocked it. She lifted her arm, and, stretching forward, she flung the little face violently into the gulf beneath. The villa rose high above the olive-ground, and the olive-ground itself sank rapidly towards the road. The fragment had far to fall. It seemed to Eleanor that in the deep stillness she heard a sound like the striking of a stone